A McAlester State Representative has voiced his support of Narconon and has reversed his support of a bill that will give the state oversight of the drug rehab facility.

Now Renegar has backed off his earlier statements and says he has a family member in the Narconon program.
Now, with legislation passing the Senate virtually unopposed, Renegar said he can’t say how he will vote on the legislation, calling it “redundant.”

He said Narconon is going through the process of certification to become approved by the state mental health board.

“I have talked to Sen. Ivester about the bill and I feel (the bill) would be redundant,” Renegar said. “By the time it becomes law, Narconon will be approved by the board.”

He said at the time he wrote the earlier statement, he was influenced by the large number of emails he received asking for him to look into the facility and since then he’s done his own investigation.

“I’ve done my own investigation and found that Narconon Arrowhead has changed it’s policies on allowing weekend passes. That’s how it happend, they went home for the weekend and brought the drugs back in and overdosed,” Renegar said.

“(Narconon) took care of that problem.”

And, since the deaths at the facility, he said a close family member of his has used the Narconon program.

“I feel comfortable enough with Narconon to send a member of my own family there,” Renegar said.

Meanwhile, State Rep. Donnie Condit. D-McAlester, said he is all for making drug rehab facilities safer and if he had to vote on the bill today, he would vote for it.

Thank you for the update, Ze Moo. So he's received countless emails and letters from constituents informing him of their concerns, yet he still sends a family member to a Narconon facility? Unbelievable!

“I have talked to Sen. Ivester about the bill and I feel (the bill) would be redundant,” Renegar said. “By the time it becomes law, Narconon will be approved by the board.”

That is a bizarre statement. How exactly is it that Renegar knows that Narconon will be approved by the state mental health board? Unless he or someone he knows lobbied the board members and somehow got them to agree to say they will approve Narconon before Narconon is even through the approval process yet!. That stinks of interference or corruption of something wicked. Does Oklahoma have any sunshine laws? is it possible to find out exactly how Renegar or Narconon is influencing the board's decision?

And then there's this contradiction:

“Many questionable practices have come to light in the last few months that have raised serious safety concerns, not just in Narconon’s reliance of daily five-hour sauna sessions and a rigid vitamin regimen to combat withdrawals, but in the quality of their staff, which appear to be inadequately educated and trained in the care and treatment of patients with drug and alcohol addictions,” Renegar said.

He says that and then in the next breath says this

“I’ve done my own investigation and found that Narconon Arrowhead has changed it’s policies on allowing weekend passes. That’s how it happend, they went home for the weekend and brought the drugs back in and overdosed,” Renegar said.

How does "weekend passes" account for all the violations in his first statement about all those safety concerns? He is obviously quoting Narconon's own talking points about what went wrong.

This is infuriating.

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
― Hannah Arendt

Breaking news from the Oklahoma legislature, where a bill that would give the state greater oversight of drug rehab facilities — specifically Scientology’s flagship operation in the state, Narconon Arrowhead — passed the state House today on a vote of 80-13. The bill now goes to Governor Mary Fallin for her signature. Nope. Just heard from Sen. Ivester’s office. They tell us the amended version of the bill was passed, and now the Senate will have to vote on it again. We’ll keep checking on it.

(Sen. Ivester’s office initially told us the bill was headed for the governor, then called us back and said it needed another vote in the senate, so apparently this stuff is even tough for them to keep track of.)

The bill previously passed unanimously in the senate.

Thanks to Stacy Dawn Murphy’s father, Robert Murphy, for alerting us of the vote. We’ll get more details as soon as we can.

UPDATE: We just talked with Rep. Jason Murphey, who helped sponsor the bill and pushed it through the 80-13 vote in Oklahoma’s House.

“It does need to go to the Senate one final time,” he told us by telephone. “But it doesn’t have to go to a committee,” he points out. The full Senate can now vote on it (last time it passed unanimously there) and then it will go to the governor.

We asked him how he felt about it. “It’s exciting to see it go through. There were some very liberal members who voted against it. But it went through with a wide margin and that’s nice to see.”

Does he think it will end up providing the Department of Mental Health the oversight that will be needed to make a difference in the case of Narconon?

“I think so. I absolutely do,” he said. “The people at the Department of Mental Health were very helpful.”

We pointed out that recently, Narconon Arrowhead CEO Gary Smith had said he didn’t understand why the legislature was paying so much attention to this bill.

“I guess when that many people pass away in your facility, it’s going to get some attention. That’s kind of how it works,” Murphey said.